the aoe heal for paladins i've heard isn't so good. probably just not in arena, definitely not something you should depend on. auras working on the entire raid group is a pretty sweet buff. ret aura becomes the primary aura for ret paladins (makes sense amirite?). sanctity aura becomes sanctified retribution, making ret aura give 2% damage to anyone affected by it, and later in the tree is a talent to make it so anyone affected by ret aura also gets 3% IAS. and as a bonus, ret aura does a bunch more damage and is affected by spell damage to a degree. Improved Devo aura also makes it so anyone affected gets bonus healing, and the armor bonus is bigger.

edit: actually, rereading beacon of light, it's possible that the heal will stack. cast on multiple people, and turn each of them into a walking healing aura. though, it's possible that it's not like so as well: only works on one target, can't heal the same person with multiple beacons, etc. Not really sure. The idea of the paladin making multiple people into healing auras could be pretty crazy though...

for the new abilities, the shield slam looks pretty nice, especially since paladins get a lot of block value on their gear. alliance finally get a seal of blood equiv, but seal of command may be better in the expansion after all. With Sheath of Light, AP will finally affect judgment of command, and anything else that was originally only spell damage. With a whole bunch of buffs, and a stun, it can do pretty outrageous damage though:

Granted he has great gear and all his natural buffs up, but that's a bit insane. It's likely to get toned down.

All the trees are insanely bloated. Good and bad: roles are more specified, but it's hard to get a good hybrid build working. Now it is necessary that you respec for different environments (pvp/pve). This is probably the pvp tree i'll work with.

Eh. Some of the shaman additions like hex are nice, but as an enhancement shaman, alot of the newer stuff is lack luster. Spirit wolves is boring. We almost had weapon specializations all rolled into one 5 point talent, but it was changed so that we could build up charges and eventually instant cast offensive spells. Ghost wolf = travel form now.

Meh. I hope there are still some nice changes coming down the enhance tree.

I saw a couple of videos on thunderstorm and that looks pretty awesome with the 20 yard knockback effect.

Probably, because Blizzard made a huge mistake by making "pvp sets of gear" and "pve sets of gear." Shouldn't be required to switch between talents or gear for pvp, but then again Blizz did too much in that aspect of the game.

I changed my mind about WoW; it certainly has the best PvE flavor of any MMO that is still being updated with the unique raids, quests and instances, however, Lineage II retains the best PvP oriented MMO that is still being updated in my book. World PvP is extremely prevalent in L2 with clan wars and the ability to kill anyone you wish at any time anywhere but it is almost nonexistent in WoW due to instances. Not to mention there is no need of changing talents/gears for PvP in L2. There are no instances in L2 so you can fuck up a rival clan's raid and take the boss, which is something my clan enjoys doing every so often. That adds to the competitiveness of the game.

I agree with hero's on this one. Although world PvP is lacking in WoW, in the long run it's probably for the better in terms of gameplay. Then again you could argue that all those carebears can go to PvE servers and stop crying.

PvE Raid instances may have been a good idea, though. I dunno. If there were no raid instances to start guild development in wow would have been way different and it probably wouldn't have phased me. So really I'm good either way.

i wish I could just kill people of my faction anytime i wanted. Aggravates me to all hell I can't kill some people. Hell, the chance to just smack rbm anytime he tries to open his mail would just give me loads of entertainment from that alone.

I'm pleased with the ret tree for paladins, and the new changes the class is getting as a whole. Conan is kinda dead for me and the guys i played it with. the pvp was decent but leveling up makes me want to stab children.

They should change it so that every time Bacon is killed, it adds a slow mo cut scene on everyone on Firetrees computer who happens to be playing at the time, showcasing the death. It can even add mock dramatic music and everything. It will be glorious.